Thanksgiving

20/10/2015

San Di-ago

“Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means ‘a whale’s vagina.’” — Ron Burgundy

For thanksgiving, some friends and myself took a trip down to San Diego. We stayed in the Hard Rock hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter, which is the main area to visit and go out in San Diego. It was after flying to San Diego, that I realised how close everything was in Europe and wondered why I had not explored there more!

Whilst there, we met up with some other friends from University in San Francisco, and we went for a meal at a place called ‘Dicks’. To clarify, in American English, a ‘dick’ is ‘An abrasive person’. The concept of the restaurant, was that the waiting on staff were purposefully rude and bad mannered (abrasive). This may sound like a strange business model, but it works quite well over in the States, as it is in stark contrast to their, comparatively, highly attentive service industry.

The service industry in America is usually very good, otherwise waiting on staff cannot afford to live (as tips bring in a large portion of their income – and why, not tipping, in America is considered very bad manners). What was amusing, was that our group was a mixture of Americans, Europeans, and Japanese, so the Americans (target audience) were loving the experience, whilst the rest of us were just slightly confused as to why we were being served like we were in our home countries!

Sadly we didn’t actually end up having a proper thanksgiving meal whilst there, but we had turkey sandwiches so at least we got some poultry.

Highlights

Only being given a warning by a really really tall cop, after pulling out in front of him as I got used to driving on the other (wrong) side of the road.

Black Friday, which wasn’t anywhere near as crazy as it was made out to be (at least not where we were).